| War and peace – some reflections | ||
| In an attempt to justify the immense cost of the space effort, NASA often points to the spin-offs from the advances in science required to enable man to be put on the moon, for information to be sent back by robots from Mars and even to reach the edge of the solar system. For some reason the scientific advance usually cited is the development of Teflon. I am not sure, however, that the need to use less fat when cooking and greater ease of washing up of the saucepans afterwards is justification for the billions of dollars spent by NASA. Surely going into space has to be justified in its own right. Likewise, the beneficial side effects of war, such as advances in science, medicine and technology, are pointed to, not explicitly as a justification for war, but as a sort of after the event sop to our consciences in the context of its vast expense and above all the immense loss of life. Certainly the pace of engineering and scientific progress vastly increased during the last world war but, for example, a slower introduction of the computer to our lives or of a workable radar system would I think have been readily accepted if the suffering under the nightly bombardments could have been avoided, not to mention the reduction of Europe as a whole to bankruptcy. Conflict may incidentally produce beneficial side effects but most of us would expect conflict to be justified, if at all, in its own right. Conflict typically arises when someone tries to take what is yours - objects, your country, your life. Either you can acquiesce or you can resist the attempt, in which case there is conflict. One would argue that to give in to someone trying to take what is not his is rarely the best option. It tends to encourage repeat actions. This however implies that you have a realistic chance of preventing it from happening. During the second world war, many countries had inadequate defences and were easily overwhelmed by the German aggressor. Although just as badly prepared, the UK had the advantage of having a moat around its castle and so was not so easily overrun. Instead, Hitler had to mount a bombing campaign in the hope of forcing our ancestors into surrender. We also had the advantage of the many countries which were willing to supply volunteer military personnel to defend the motherland, particularly when it came to the invasion of France on D Day. And of course, after the attack on Pearl Harbour by Japan (an ally of the German fatherland), the USA joined in as well. Although many of our aristocracy (including Edward VIII – later demoted to be a mere duke) were sympathetic to the fascist cause, it’s easy to see that if Hitler had not been resisted then the inevitable consequences would have been too horrible to imagine. Apart from the arbitrary deaths of non-Arians, the whole of a continent would effectively have been enslaved. Morally speaking, however, things get murkier when we look at the period between major wars. Not being a pacifist, I would accept that a country has to provide for its own defence. Does that mean that the state manufactures its own arms or does it put it out to private enterprise? The difficulty with private enterprise is that it has to continue manufacturing during the interwar years. If not, the companies have to close their doors. The disadvantage of state produced armaments is that the armaments are produced by the state – with all the inefficiencies that implies. Even when not actually produced by the state, however, we see that the state’s role in defining what it wants the armament industry to supply leads us down blind alleys. Effectively, between wars, those defining our needs seem still to be fighting the last war and asking for the armaments which would then have been needed. The war between Ukraine and Russia shows that ground forces are still being used in vast numbers – particularly by Russia – as are missiles. The armament of the moment however is the drone. They are cheap to produce, even in the vast quantities required, and very effective. Using an onboard camera, they enable their operators actually to see and pursue their targets on the ground, whether people or Russian planes parked up at distant aerodromes. We are now finding out the hard way that without placing substantial orders with arms manufacturers and so keeping them busy in the interwar period, we end up in a position of weakness. We do not have the stock-piles required when conflict threatens or the ability quickly to upscale manufacturing capacity. Private companies need to have an ability to continue to trade, and trade profitably. To trade profitably and to innovate they need the economies of scale provided by having more than just one (state) customer. Having numerous customers means that manufacturing output will be both greater and more evened-out over time – war seems always to be with us, although its location in different parts of the world varies with time. In other words, a profitable arms industry depends on the consumption of its materials by, well, war. No surprise there, but equally it causes unease to anyone thinking about it. We try to overcome this unease by imposing licensing conditions on arms manufacturers, telling them which countries they can sell to. But there is still a world-wide black-market in arms supplied by the likes of Russia China and North Korea. Most people would regard war as an evil, one with which we obviously have difficulty coming to terms. And so we have people who are pacifists, and would ban all engagement in armed conflict. Then there are those who, without being pacifists, would be against investment in arms companies or others who say that the market should be left to work subject to our licensing conditions. During the second world war, the pacifists were still required to go to the front line, but acted mainly as stretcher bearers and medics, roles which no doubt further persuaded them of the rightness of their belief. But how we can approve of the existence of arms manufacturers but consider actual investment, direct or indirect, to be morally unacceptable, I really have no idea. It seems to me to be irrational. To go even further though and have an arms manufacturing industry able to sell arms to whichever country asks for them is to me a quite extraordinary concept. It means that we are turning an activity which surely should be undertaken with reluctance in order to defend ourselves and our allies into an ordinary transactional opportunity. So then, in my view, we are left with accepting armament manufacture as a necessary evil, but one to be controlled very imperfectly by licensing. But what of the present conflicts? Of the current major global conflicts, the newest ones are the Myanmar civil war, triggered in February 2021, and the war in Ukraine. Seven of the conflicts are in Asia, including Syria’s complicated civil war. Five of them are on the African continent. The press tells us what they think will grab our attention and have decided that war in Asia and Africa is not likely to attract readers. So we’re left with the continuing conflict over Palestine and the Russia invasion of Ukraine. Those involved in the two lots of peace negotiations of course all have their guiding principles: a genuine wish to stop the killing; the avoidance of prosecution while in office in the case of Netanyahu; restoring the territorial integrity of old Russia or gaining a Nobel peace prize. It’s all very personal, but then it always is. One of the many difficulties with the Trump approach to negotiation, however, is that neither he nor his golf chums are willing (or able) to understand the details necessary for a worthwhile deal in complex political situations. He wishes to have a quick fix so that he can claim that he has brought ‘peace’ and so be deserving of the Nobel peace prize. But he does this without ensuring that the peace will hold in the longer term. Neither does he take any account of the loss of freedom of the people occupying the land to be taken under Russian control by his proposed real estate transaction. 18 August 2025 Paul Buckingham |
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